


something cursed from the start

by prettyaveragewhiteshark



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Mild Gore, Sex, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, also I recognize how weird of a sex scene this is so please don't call my therapist, do I kind of ship it?, i'm FINE, yeah I do kind of ship it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:15:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29346462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyaveragewhiteshark/pseuds/prettyaveragewhiteshark
Summary: A little smutty one-shot for our favorite baby Lyctors, or: what I think would've happened if Harrow hadn't turned away from the kiss, and if Ortus the First had been in the training room where he was supposed to be when she went to kill him
Relationships: Harrianthe, Harrow/Ianthe, Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Ianthe Tridentarius, Harrowhark/Ianthe, Harryanthe - Relationship
Comments: 6
Kudos: 53





	something cursed from the start

“ _That_ was the cue?” Your voice sounded humiliatingly high-pitched. 

“Harry,” said Ianthe, thankfully also a trifle strangled, “when three people start kissing, it is _always_ a cue. A cue to _leave_.”

You said, “I feel unwell.”

“Yes. Yes, me too,” she said heatedly, in unexpected accord. “That was disgusting, to say the least. Old people should be shot.”

Ianthe’s hair was in long margarine tangles down her neck, and her mascara was smudged beneath her eyes, and her ribs were heaving as though she were in an asthsmatic fit. She carried her high-heeled shoes in her gilded skeleton hand, and they made for a strange juxtaposition. The breath-soft lavender gauze had a tiny violet stain on the front, and her mouth was red: she had been chewing her lips, and they had broken, and split. 

Ianthe ran a tongue across those wounded lips and said, “I suppose this is it.”

You said, “I appreciate your part in this, Tridentarius,” but before you could stop her, she drew you close with her living arm, and she bent her head to yours. You understood this inevitability only a second before it happened, and when her ruined mouth found your lips, you, for your part, found yourself quite unable to turn away. You kissed her back, perfunctorily at first, as if she were checking to see if your jaw was still your jaw, your tongue still your tongue. But then the reality of the task of murdering a man who was ten thousand years your senior and significantly more skilled in the act of murder sank onto your shoulders like the dying soul of a planet, and you realized that perhaps tonight, after all this time, you would finally die. 

So you kissed the Third again, more fiercely, and your hand rose against her jaw to pull her more deeply to you. She held you tight around the shoulders. You tasted her blood, and as her teeth closed ungently over your bottom lip, you thought you might taste yours too. To your surprise, her bite lessened before she could break the skin, and she smoothed her tongue over the ache instead. She kissed you until you nearly forgot what it was you had to do next. But a stiff, shuddering sigh left her, and she pulled away. Her pale, strange, blue and brown-flecked eyes were glittering in the evening lights of the corridor. 

“Good luck, Harry,” she said, aiming for her standard dismissiveness and missing by a mile. “Try not to die.”

You did not die. Ortus the First met his end at your unyielding hands, and when it was finished you stood over the body, blood soaked, your meat mending itself slowly as you sheathed the sword in your exoskeleton. His ruined face was pointed toward the far wall, his body littered with bone shrapnel from the bomb you had rolled into the training room that had, miraculously, done most of the murdering for you. You had delivered the final blow, half-severing his head from his shoulders in a gout of arterial blood. 

It was over. Your peace had returned. 

You knelt by the body, sprouting a bone knife from your knuckles, and plunged it into his chest. You ripped through the cooling flesh and stubborn tendon, levering his sternum apart from his ribs as you went. You withdrew the knife, then stabbed again, this time horizontal to his collarbone. Lift, stab, and cut, lift, stab, and saw, until he was a hollow shell and you had what you came for. Then you stood, wiping your cheek with a forearm, doing exactly nothing with that gesture except smearing the blood to all hell, and you left. 

Ortus the First’s heart was heavy and dripping in your palm as you pushed your way through Ianthe’s bedroom door. The lights were off except for the strip of yellowed bulbs behind a wall panel, and the distant silver of the millions of stars outside the plex window, both of which lent hardly any illumination whatsoever. For a moment, as the door swung closed behind you, you thought that you were in the room alone, save for the clothing-optional Lyctors on the walls. But then there was a rustle of movement on the rumpled folds of the bed, and Ianthe leaned up on her gilded bone arm. 

Her face was shadowed, but you saw that her lips were parted, her pale cheeks flushed ever so slightly. Her living arm had been tangled in her robes, but she withdrew it now, pushing herself completely upright as she stared at you, her wide, pale eyes glittering in starlight. 

“Harry,” she said, her voice a little unkempt around the edges. “I was just thinking about you.”

You said nothing, only walked closer, lifting what lay heavy and wet in your right hand. Her eyes went to it, and a spasm of glee rippled her expression. 

“Is that-?” she murmured in a tone that was shockingly near awestruck. She left her bed, her sheer robe fluttering lightly around her calves as she lighted on the floor and drew close. Her hands cupped the back of yours, cradling the red, freshly dead organ like it was a fragile animal. 

“Ortus the First is dead,” you said. Your voice was rough. You felt like a stripped nerve, raw with victory, utterly exposed before the princess Lyctor of Ida. Her eyes moved from the heart to your face, searching your depths, and you felt as though it might as well be your heart out in the open like this for all she could see of you. 

“Yes,” Ianthe breathed finally. “And you’re not.”

You were covered in blood, enough of it that it was still wet and sliding down the nape of your neck, making trails down your spine, over the backs of your knuckles. Some of it was yours. Most of it wasn’t. You could still feel where parts of you were stitching themselves up from the inside, recovering from the push of Ortus’s relentless spear. Yes. He was dead, and you were decidedly not. 

“I haven’t met the thing yet that could kill me,” you said, a little over-dramatically. “I don’t think I ever will.”

Ianthe did not respond. She lifted both hands to your face, the cool gilded bone of her thumb dragging across your bottom lip. She leaned in close, put the thumb in her mouth without releasing your jaw, and sucked the blood off. She smiled, and her lip split again, the blood dark against the pale milk of her skin. 

You closed the gap of a few spare inches between your mouths, dropping Ortus’s heart to the floor with a wet sound. You kissed her with an open, aggressive mouth, pressing in with your tongue, letting her taste the blood of you. She hesitated not at all, dragging your robe away from your shoulders. She reached up to tug at the hilt of the two-hander, still stuck firmly in its bone scabbard on your back, and you broke away from the kiss abruptly. 

“I can’t get you naked with this thing on,” she said by way of explanation, which you had to admit was a fair point. 

“If you try to kill me, Tridentarius-”

She responded by releasing the hilt of the sword, gripping the front of your bloodied shirt, and backing you roughly against the wall near the bed. She leaned in close, pressing your two bodies together. 

“You said it yourself, Nonagesimus,” she whispered into your ear, her voice like rust. “You haven’t yet met the thing that will kill you. Far be it for me to try to change that now.”

You relented, only because you knew you could kill her a thousand different ways without the sword. You released your exoskeleton, and the bones withdrew from around your shoulders and rib cage to cling to the wall instead, pinning the sword there. 

“Better,” Ianthe said. 

There was not much to getting undressed. There was no fanfare, no sly attempts at pretending that either of you were here for any other reason. Ianthe stepped back, discarding her robe, then her camisole and shorts, and there she was, pale and naked as a new star. You pulled off your shirt, your pants, your boots, and she pulled you into bed.

You straddled her body and kissed her furiously. You did not think about how you had never done this before, about how you had hardly ever even _thought_ of doing this before, ever, with anyone, except for maybe the Body, but she didn’t really seem to count with Ianthe spread underneath you like a living galaxy. You felt certain that Ianthe had been with more than her share of bedmates, and you wondered how many of them you knew by name. 

“I can hear you thinking,” Ianthe said against your lips. “You need to relax.”

That made you angry, but only because you were already embarrassed. 

“Shut up, Third,” you told her. 

She heard the shame coloring your voice, and she pulled back from your mouth, looking flushed and irritatingly radiant, now of all times. “Do you even know how to fuck a woman?” 

In response, you put one hand around her pearl-colored throat. The blood on your knuckles was hard and heavy in contrast to the bone white of her skin, and you liked it. Your body was thrumming, boiling beneath the surface, and you answered another instinctive pull, moving one knee so your legs were interlocked with hers. Then you pressed your hips down and in, pushing your thigh hard between hers. It all happened in the span of a very rushed breath, and Ianthe’s face registered a delighted sort of shock before you made contact at the core of her and then her eyes rolled back a little as she gasped. 

You leaned in, tightening your fingers around her throat ever so slightly, and bit down on the skin beneath her ear. “Why don’t we find out?” you said, and for once, she had no biting reply. She only moaned, and drew your hips down against hers with her hands, and caught your mouth in a kiss again. 

She moved beneath you wantonly, tangling her hands in your hair, her heavy breaths marking staccato points across your lips and skin. She didn’t seem to mind the blood, and, if you were being honest, you didn’t either. It had mostly dried by the time she pulled you into bed, but the sweat of your bodies liquefied it again and your body painted hers in swaths of red, the smell and taste of salt and rust making you primal. The noises that rolled from her tongue as you touched her, as your bodies moved together like sinew and muscle, twisted in your chest and made your teeth clench hard in the back of your jaw. They made you want to open her throat, find the source, to silence it or swallow it, you couldn’t really tell which. 

And when noises broke from you because of how she had touched you or moved against you, Ianthe would take your face in her hands, and her eyes were flat and dark, her pupils blown wide like twin black holes, and she would do what she had just done, do it again to make the noises come, and watch your face ravenously while they did. You knew that she wanted to open your throat too. You were glad. 

She sat you up, her legs threaded over your hips, her heels pressed to the small of your back. Blood fell in sweat runnels down the planes of her chest. She kissed you, her mouth fierce and demanding, her hands on your jaw, on the back of your neck. You tasted her past the blood, and she was earth and death and vast, wicked, empty space, and you hated her, and you loved her, and you wished she would die, and you knew she would live forever, and you were glad for it.

She broke the kiss and leaned close, her fingers gripping the back of your head. 

“How did he die?” she asked. Her breath was hot against your ear. Her teeth found the skin of your neck, and it stung. Her gilded hand found your cunt, and it burned like a white fire. Your back arched. Your fingers dug into her shoulder blades. “Tell me how Ortus the First died,” Ianthe said. 

“I hit him with a bone bomb,” you gasped into the dark. “It cut his skin to shreds. It destroyed his eyes. He couldn’t find me when I came in.”

Ianthe entered you then, and a broken sound exploded from your chest. You sagged into her, feeling the tension in your skull as your eyes rolled back. 

“Tell me,” Ianthe said. 

“He had his spear in his hands, and he listened for me. He struck true, impaled my lungs.” Ianthe pressed up into you, her hand moving hard and steady and deep. You screwed your eyes closed, trying to breathe. “But he couldn’t see me. He knew he was going to die.”

“Good,” Ianthe crooned. 

“I took my time,” you said. You shuddered at the heat, the pressure of her inside you. Your legs were shaking, which you only registered vaguely. You couldn’t bring yourself to be embarrassed at it. “He couldn’t escape. He knew it, and I knew it. I drew my sword so he could hear it, so he would know how he was going to die.”

“Was he afraid?” Ianthe asked, her voice raw. 

“No,” you breathed, trying to focus, trying to push against the heat gathering. “He turned toward me. He threw his spear blindly, and it went through my belly.”

A sound sobbed out of Ianthe, and you realized with a start that she was touching herself with her living hand. You pushed it aside, and pressed into her yourself. A half cry fell from her lips, snapped at the root, heavy against your neck. You curled your fingers, and she sobbed again. 

“Tell me,” she begged. 

“I could feel the blood pouring down my skin. I was glad that he had hurt me, one more time.” Ianthe nodded, a clipped whine in the back of her throat. You pressed into her, and she pressed into you, and your voices mingled in the wet dark. The heat was rising, spreading from where her fingers had found you inside, out and through your belly, touching where the spearpoint had pierced you, moving down into your legs. You weren’t going to hold much longer. But you had to tell her. You pressed your mouth to her ear, feeling her panting breaths against your throat. 

“I pulled the spear out and felt the blood flow. I threw it at his feet. Then I raised my sword,” you said. You were shaking. So was she. “I opened his throat in one clean slice. The Saint of Duty died silently, looking away.”

Ianthe bit down on your shoulder, her body stiffening, her fingers plunging into you, and you felt it break. The heat poured out, across your limbs, tightening your stomach, pushing your ribs in, and you couldn’t help the warm, hard sound that poured from your mouth. You crumpled into her, managing to keep your fingers moving even through the haze of orgasm, and you felt her break too. Her sounds dragged against your ear, and she kissed your neck with an open mouth, muffling herself against you. 

You finished first, the heat going out like a candle in a breeze, and you the drifting smoke left behind, frail and without form. You leaned against Ianthe, feeling her tremble. Her mouth left your neck, and through the vibration of her cries you heard, very quietly, _“I didn’t want you to die.”_

You lowered your head to hers and kissed her as she came. 

When she was finished, you both sat together in the dark, propped up against each other, panting, sweating, bloody as the day you were born. 

Ianthe drew back first, slowly, and looked at you and her eyes were so consumed by the black space of pupil you couldn’t tell whose you were looking into. She looked at you, and you looked back, and you saw your future, a myriad entwined inexorably with Ianthe Tridentarius, princess of Ida, of the Third House. You knew then that no matter how much time passed, no matter what space came between you two, you would remind her. You would call her by name. 

“Harrowhark,” she said. “Nonagesimus.”

You kissed her, sealing the promise there. She wrapped her arm around your shoulders, her gilded hand cupping your jaw. It was tender, almost. It was like she knew what you had promised. It was like, in this covenant of death and blood, she was promising you the same. 


End file.
